Animorphs: The Song Remains The Same
by musicman88
Summary: or does it...? There's only one way to find out. Why not take a peak inside? For all of you not in "the know", this is the "sequel" to my original story "The Song". Now, enough with the Led Zeppelin references, GO READ IT!


Animorphs: The Song Remains The Same 

Insert normal disclaimer here

_Thought-speak in italics _

Note: Hooray, the "sequel" is done! For all of you that are unaware, this is a continuation of my previous fic "Animorphs: The Song". I would suggest going and reading that first. It's not so much for the continuation of the story (which is why I decided to make this a separate story instead of just another chapter), it's just because these are a little bit different than your usual fanfic. First off, you'll need this: (www .savefile .com/files/1391217) (Without the spaces of course (stupid formating!) If you're reading this story years from when it was first posted then the link might not work anymore. Send me a pm or something and I'll make sure to get it to you.) I think it'll be obvious when you should play it, especially if you read my last one. The quality is a little lower than the previous one because I broke my good $20 headset microphone and had to use my crappy $10 dollar standard microphone for the vocals. But I think it gets the message across well enough. Anyway, enough blabber. Time for the story with a title borrowed from a Led Zeppelin song!

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My name is Tobias, and I was freezing. One of the very few things I absolutely hate about living in Yellowstone is the wintertime. I never had to deal with anything like it before since I'd been living in southern California for all of my life. Sure, I'd been all the way to the North Pole before, and it had to be at least fifty degrees warmer here than it was there, but that didn't mean I still wasn't cold. I tried to fluff my feathers up a bit more, but they were already fluffed out as far as they would go. All I could do was sit there and endure it while I searched the endless white plane for any sign of movement.

"If the cold bothers you so much then why don't you just move back," you're probably saying to yourself. Well, I'd love to but I just can't. I have too many painful memories about Rachel to ever go back there.

I've had a lot trouble trying to cope with losing Rachel over the past nine months or so. At first all I wanted to do was sit in my meadow and die. I can thank Toby for saving me from that and bringing me with her to the new Hork-Bajir colony. She helped me get back on my feet somewhat and kept me from acting on my suicidal thoughts, but I still had a huge hole in my heart from losing Rachel, and I didn't think that it was ever going to heal.

Even though I had gone back to living out a somewhat average hawk life, there wasn't a moment that went by that I didn't think about Rachel. When you spend most of your time waiting for prey to stroll on by your mind tends to wander just a bit. And the thing my mind wandered to the most was all the memories I had of her. Even after nine months I still couldn't get her out of my mind, not even a little bit.

I might have looked alright on the outside, but I was still a wreck on the inside. It's just that I had so many of my emotions still bottled up inside me and I had no way to let them out. I cried every now and then, sure, but it only helped a little bit. I needed something better than just crying, but until now I hadn't found anything that really works. Little did I know that things were about to change.

_I give up, _I said to no one in particular, _nothing's moving out here._ I decided that I was going to go to bed hungry again, which had become almost a fact of life during the month or two of winter I had already experienced. _Only a few more months to go_, I said out loud again with a strong sigh. I stretched out my wings a bit and I took off from my perch. I needed to get some movement going in my limbs so I could generate some more body heat, and the only way I knew how to do that was to fly.

Since the sun was beginning to set on the short winter day there weren't that many thermals left (not like there were many to begin with since the snow covering reflected most of the light anyway). That meant that I would have to flap hard to get any altitude, but I guess that was the idea. Once I was at a high enough altitude and my wings were starting to get tired I let the light evening breeze carry me onward. When I got too cold I flapped a bit more and then began to ride the breeze again when my wings began to get tired. On and on it usually went until I eventually got either too tired or too cold. But today was going to be a bit different as I would find out soon enough.

I was flying over a partially frozen river when I saw something odd bobbing up and down in the water. It was visible enough to catch my attention, but in the dimming light I couldn't really make out what it was at this distance. But one thing was for sure, it was definitely something that didn't belong there. And I've had a few experiences with strange things floating down the rivers before. I had a pretty good idea of what it was already even though I couldn't get a good look at it. It was probably someone's backpack.

People lost their backpacks down the river more than you'd imagine, especially during the summer rafting season. I hadn't seen any come by in this weather yet, but then again I've only been trapped in this weather for a few months myself. I guess that it was possible for someone trying to cross the river at a seemingly frozen part to slip and fall in. It was stupid, but possible; I've seen it happen before. Whoever was hiking in their group would usually end up saving the drowning person, but their backpack wasn't so lucky usually.

So why do I seem to be so worried about someone's lost backpack? Well, there's a little story behind that.

It happened only a month or two after I'd arrived here at Yellowstone. I was still hopelessly lost in Rachel's death and I don't remember much else from that time, but there's one thing I'll never forget.

I was out flying around one day when I took notice of a lone hiker walking through the woods. I began to follow him for a bit, just looking for any reason to get my mind off Rachel. Eventually he got to the edge of one of the rivers and had to stop his hike. After consulting with his map he seemed determined to make it across the river any way he could. What was going through his head I'd never know, but he eventually found a fallen log and made a makeshift paddle out of a couple branches.

I was very intrigued in what he was doing. I couldn't believe that he was going to try and make it across sitting on a log, but I didn't do anything to stop him. I just watched as he rolled the log to the edge of the river and pushed it out far enough so that it was floating. Then he climbed on top of it and began to try and paddle across.

He made it almost half way across (farther than I ever would've thought) before he finally tipped over.

He began to thrash and splash in the water and all I could do was continue to watch. I was still not all there from losing Rachel only a few months earlier, so I didn't even realize what was really happening until much later. He was drowning.

His main problem for him was trying to stay above the surface of the water. He kept bobbing up and down like a cork until he was finally able to undo his backpack straps. He tried to keep a hold on his backpack after it was off, but the river current had other ideas. It eventually got separated from him and started to make its own way down the river. Once he realized that trying to grab a hold of it again would be hopeless, he began to focus on getting himself to shore.

He just barely made it too. After he climbed up onto the bank and was on solid ground once again he quite literally collapsed. And all I did was watch.

He just laid there for a long time. If I wasn't so messed up myself I would've come down to check on him, but I just continued circling above. After a while he finally sat up and I could only guess he began to think about what to do. He was real deep in the wilderness, and now he didn't even have anything to help him survive. And worst of all he didn't even have a map to help him find his way out. So after trying to calm his nerves and thinking hard about what to do, he eventually got up and started walking away from the river, probably in the direction he originally meant to go.

I continued to follow him for the next few days. I was intrigued because this sort of thing didn't happen all the time, but it never really occurred to me to help him. And he needed help, badly. He had basically been going around in circles since he came from the river. And that wasn't the worst part really. The path he took kept him away from any major sources of water and he didn't seem to know how to reliably find food by himself. After a few days of strenuous hiking he was just about ready to drop. He probably would've if that bear hadn't found him first.

He was so weak and dehydrated by now that he put up almost no fight against the hungry bear. And before I knew it the bear was tearing out some of his vital organs as he just laid there in a tangle of body parts. I don't remember much else after that. It was all just a blur until the next thing I knew I was sitting on what remained of the guy's leg and tearing out a piece of his calf.

That's what snapped me back into reality. And it wasn't just reality for that moment in time; it was a reality that I hadn't experienced since I lost Rachel.

I spit out whatever I had in my mouth and quickly flew to a low branch. What the hell was I doing? How did I ever let myself lose it so bad? How could I… How could I have…

It's only then that it dawned on me what had been going on the past few days. It was almost as if I was watching a bad movie in my head as I began to remember every detail. I could've stopped him from crossing in the first place. And even if I hadn't done that I could've at least helped him out of the forest. He'd come pretty close to another camp once, and all I had to do was say 'turn right' and he would've been saved. Instead, he was lying on the ground in a large pool of blood with his body being desecrated by all sorts of wild animals, including me.

I was disgusted with myself. How could I have done something like this? An innocent hiker died all because I was too busy being lost in my hopeless thoughts about something I would never have again. Well, I was going to make sure something like this would never happen again. I vowed right there, over that dead hikers body, to help anyone I possibly could from now on. And I didn't have to wait long to put my vow to the test.

A week or so after that I saw a small group of hikers who were hiking up the river. One of them seemed to be carrying some sort of inflatable raft, so I figured they were planning on rafting back down the river. I knew a good spot where there were some decent rapids, so I decided to watch them try and raft through since I didn't have much else to do. It was a good thing I was watching though. Otherwise things wouldn't have turned out so good for them.

Everything started out nice, but once they hit the rapids something went wrong. Their small raft got caught on a fallen log or a sharp rock or something and began to tear. Before I knew it they started spilling out into the rapids by themselves.

Luckily they were prepared and all of them were wearing life jackets. Eventually each one of them made it to shore safely, but their gear was another story. The three backpacks carrying their supplies had all made it out of the rapids, so I caught up with them as the river began to double back. I knew what I needed to do.

If I hadn't done anything else for that lone hiker I could've at least gotten his backpack back for him. It wouldn't have been very hard and with that one single act he could've made it out of the forest without even knowing that I was here. I wasn't going to let these people go through what I made him go through. I was going to get their equipment back to them no matter how much I hated the water.

After a bit of flying I passed what I believed to be the fastest traveling bag. Now that I was in front of everything it was time to get far enough ahead so I could morph. I knew that this wasn't going to be fun, but I wasn't doing this because it was fun; I was doing this to possibly save some lives.

Once I had gotten far enough ahead I began to look for a branch that was overhanging the river so I could perch on it and morph. You see, hawks don't swim very well. Actually, they don't swim at all. So instead of just diving headlong into the river and possibly drowning before I could morph I decided to do something a bit better. I was going to morph as much as possible on an overhanging branch before it either broke under my weight or I fell off. What was I planning to morph, you ask? Well, I didn't have much to choose from really, so there was only one reasonable choice. I was going to morph a dolphin. It wasn't perfect, but it was all that I had. And if I did everything right I should be able to get all their gear back onto the shore.

When I found a branch I liked I immediately landed and began to morph. The first thing I noticed was my beak started to soften and turn into hot wax. It stretched and bent like someone was blowing it out of hot glass. It grew longer and longer before I almost lost my balance. The thing that saved me was my tail. My tail feathers started to melt together and begin to extend as well. I could feel the new muscles in my tail forming which gave me kind of a burning sensation. But then I started to lose what I wanted to keep until last, my talons. They were already straining against the extra weight, but now they started to get absorbed into my rapidly growing body. It was only a matter of time before I finally lost my balance and slipped off the branch far earlier than I would've liked.

And, as I found out the hard way, the branch I had chosen was only over water about six inches deep. I hit the river bottom hard on my stomach and it knocked the wind right out of me. As I lay there gasping for air at least I had enough composure to finish my morph. By the time I had caught my breath again I was fully a dolphin.

I waited for the usual happy-go-lucky dolphin mind to come bouncing into my head, but that's not what I got. I was cold. Freezing in fact. And the dolphin didn't like it one bit. I had to force myself to roll over into deeper water.

And that wasn't the end of my problems. The dolphin brain didn't like the fact that there was a somewhat strong current constantly pulling me down the river. Having to swim in order to stay in place made the dolphin very uneasy. But that wasn't the worst part either. That award went to all the dirt and silt in the river without a doubt. It was horrible. It felt like someone was rubbing sandpaper all along my body. And my eyes became useless the moment I opened them due to all the silt that got into them. I was lucky that I had my echolocation, but even that was a bit cloudy due to the silt in the river. You don't usually find dolphins in rivers, and now I knew why.

But I didn't have time to worry about trivial stuff like that, I needed to find the first bag or I might not get another chance. I didn't have to wait long before my echolocation picked up something. The picture was a bit fuzzy, but I could tell it was something out of the ordinary. I swam up to it and gently bumped into it with my nose. Once I was as sure as I could be about what it was I began to direct its path over to the shore. Once I had it firmly planted in the soft riverbank soil I quickly went back to get the other equipment.

After about half an hour of enduring the freezing water and painful river silt I was confident that I had finally gotten everything that made it out of the rapids. I literally jumped onto the bank once I was done; I couldn't wait to get out of that river. I rolled over onto the bank farther just to make sure I was completely out of the water and only then did I start to demorph.

The hardest part was over, but I still wasn't done by far. Once I was a hawk again I began to morph to human. I needed to get the bags out of the damp river soil and onto the forest ground so that they could begin drying. I didn't want to start going through some stranger's backpack, so just placing them on somewhat dry soil was going to have to be enough. I didn't think they'd mind if their backpacks were a bit damp after "losing" them in the river anyway. So once I had everything out drying, and somewhat protected from all the wild animals, I demorphed one final time to check on what progress the group had made.

When I caught sight of them they were already walking along the edge of the river. The only equipment they had were their life jackets and a paddle or two, but nevertheless they were trying to carry on. But if they tried to follow the river exclusively (which was probably the smartest thing for them to do about now) then it'd take them days to get back. The river had numerous twists and turns which made it seem like it went on forever, but if you had a map then you could just follow a trail that'd take you back to the campground in a day or two. They probably took that trail to get here, but I doubt they'd be able to find it again without a map. And once I gave them their backpacks back they should have no problem making it back.

But I wasn't in any great hurry. They were still about a half-day's hike away from joining the trail and there was no way they'd make it there today. Plus, no matter how much I wanted to help people, I still didn't want anyone to know I was here. I was doing better then when I first got here, but I was still an emotional wreck. I couldn't handle people combing the woods just to get an interview with me, so I had to stay anonymous, at least for now.

I decided to give them back their backpacks during the night when I could sneak in and out easily. I already knew how I planned to do it, but my plan didn't start for another few hours. After watching the group for a bit and truly making sure everything was alright with them I went back to my meadow to grab some food and get some rest. All that morphing and swimming had tired me out.

As the sun began to go down I began my flight back. As I passed over the group's heads again I saw that they had already started to make camp for the night. They were obviously more prepared than that lone hiker I had seen first and they seemed to have some idea what they were doing. They had the area cleared out already and were even trying to start a fire as I passed by.

When I made it to the equipment it was already too dark to fly in my hawk form. But I wasn't going to have a problem with the darkness once I morphed. You see, the only morph I had that could carry all that equipment during the night in almost complete silence was my Hork-Bajir morph, Ket Halpak to be exact. I was just going to have to be careful with all my blades being so close to all the straps, but I'd worry about that when the time came.

Once I was finished morphing I went over and uncovered the equipment I'd hidden. Nothing had bothered it while I was gone (probably due to the fact that the river had washed away almost all of the smells). I took each backpack, one by one, and gently found a safe place to put them on my spiky and bladed body (easier said than done). Once I was confident enough in my arrangement I took a few leaps in between some branches and I was up in the treetops in no time.

My Hork-Bajir vision was decent enough at night so I didn't have much of a problem navigating through the trees. In almost complete silence I swung from branch to branch carrying an external load that no human could've possibly carried by themselves. In no time at all I had reached the group's camp. Two slashed straps and a somewhat large hole in the top of one of the bags was a small price to pay for what they would be receiving in the morning.

I jumped down to ground level after I checked to see if they were all asleep already. One sniff of the air told me that they hadn't gotten their fire going which I had expected would happen (I've only ever seen two people successfully light a fire by rubbing two sticks together, and one was on TV!). As quietly as possible I laid the three bags in the middle of the four of them and quietly took off into the woods to demorph.

I was there early in the morning so I could catch their reactions. The "dad" (I kind of guessed it was a family of four) was the one who woke up first. He took his time getting up and wiping the sleep out of his eyes, but once his eyes fell on what was in the middle of his camp the only thing he could do was stare in disbelief. He had to have stared at those bags for a good five minutes before he actually got the courage to go and inspect them. Once he was sure that they were actually the ones that he'd "lost" down the river he began running around the campsite and waking everybody else up.

The whole family was ecstatic. A few of them even got down on their knees and I could see their mouths say, "thank you." Even though they weren't expecting anyone to answer I was saying 'you're welcome' back on the inside.

It felt good. No, it felt great. I hadn't had a feeling like this since way before Rachel died. And for just a brief moment I felt normal again; like my old self. I had forgotten how good it could feel to help someone.

I continued to watch the family as they ate a few powerbars each, filled up their canteens, checked their map, and began hiking again. I kept up with them until they made it to the trail. As they turned onto it I knew that they'd be safe now. I gave them each one last glance and then I finally turned around and started off towards my meadow.

My happy feeling lasted a few days, but after that I began to slowly return to my previous state. Eventually all I could think about was Rachel again, and that's the way it would continue to be.

I rescued a few more bags from their watery fate after that as well. I usually knew who they belonged to and gave them back, getting the same temporary feeling each time. But it was never enough. I always eventually went back to thinking about Rachel.

And lately there hadn't been many bags floating down the river. Although Yellowstone was just as beautiful, if not even more beautiful during the winter, the cold temperatures kept most people away. Nevertheless there were still a few daring hikers who braved the elements. And I guess eventually someone had to lose their bag, even if it hadn't happened in a few months. And freezing water or not, I still wanted to help them; especially now since someone's bag would be the only thing keeping someone alive in these temperatures.

I knew right away that there was no way a dolphin was going to work, much less survive. I was freezing in the water in the middle of summer, so I didn't even want to think about what it would feel like now. But I had another morph that would be perfect. I just hoped that no one saw me since it wasn't exactly native to Yellowstone (even though sometimes I wondered why not). I took a good look around once I was far enough ahead of the backpack. I saw no humans around, so I dove towards the riverbank.

I didn't need a fancy morphing perch or anything like that for this morph. It was quite happy both on land and in the water, and it actually preferred the cold temperatures. I was looking forward to the warmth.

Once I landed on the frozen sheet of ice that had been the ground for the past month or two I began to morph. The first thing that happened was that my feathers began to shrink and become thin. Once all my feathers were white hairs more of them started popping out of my skin. My wing joints bent and twisted to accommodate my new front paws which made me fall forward beak first into the snow. But lucky for me my beak began to quickly soften and stretch into my new muzzle. By that time my front paws were long enough to reach the ground and my whole face had changed already. Most of my senses grew dimmer except for my smell which was amplified tenfold. I curiously sniffed the air as I finished morphing and let the bouquet of strange and exotic smells fill my nostrils. But before I could get lost in the polar bear's mind I forced myself to calmly walk into the river.

The water was actually only a bit colder than the air which definitely felt weird to my human brain. But the polar bear brain was focused on the same problem the dolphin's did; it had to keep swimming to stay in place. Even though it didn't like it I had to keep swimming. I had to be ready at a moments notice just in case the backpack came into my short field of vision. Again, I didn't have to wait long until I found what I was looking for.

With my bear eyes being what they were, especially in the very dim light, I still couldn't get a good view of what the object was. But I could definitely tell that it didn't belong in the river. I swam up to it and gave it a small nudge with my muzzle. It felt hard; almost as if it was made of wood or something. After being confused for a second I finally came up with an explanation. It had to be frozen by now. That's why it felt so solid. Either that or it was filled to the brim with stuff.

So I cautiously kept on nudging it towards shore as I kept trying to get a good view of it. It had a very weird shape for a backpack, but I guessed that it was just filled or frozen weird. It wasn't until I finally got to shore that I found out what it was.

As I gently dragged it past the shallows and onto the bank it hit me. I knew what it was, but I couldn't believe it! I had to demorph to get a definitive look at it and even that wasn't enough to truly convince me. I had to morph to human so I could physically touch it just to be sure.

It was a guitar.

But this wasn't just some random guitar. I knew this guitar well, more than I would've liked to anyway…

Every few months there'd be this small group of college kids that would always come up this way. Why they came up this far I don't really know. I guess that they feel safe being this deep in the woods. You see, they don't just come up here to camp. They come up here to party.

I swear that they don't have anything in their backpacks except a tent, sleeping bags, some powerbars, and a whole lot of alcohol. I've seen them pull out everything from beer cans to bottles of Vodka.

Now, I'm all for having a good time and all, but these guys take it to the extreme. Once they're drunk enough they start to become really annoying. Out of control fires, climbing and falling out of trees, and just being obnoxiously loud are the norm for them. It's like they have no respect for any animal within miles of their campsite, which always happens to be very close to my own meadow. In order to survive I have to be sharp and focused almost all the time. But when you've been up all night due to some frat boy's secluded party it's hard to function the next day.

But I guess I could forgive them for that. I mean, before I was trapped as a hawk I didn't really think about all the animals out in the forest either. But it's something else that they did that always got to me. After they were done falling out of trees, they brought out their acoustic guitar. The very guitar that I was holding in my hands now.

It had a black finish which is why I couldn't recognize it at first. I'd never heard of the maker before, but it sounded decent enough. That is, before they got too drunk to play it right.

Let me just say that drunk people should be banned from playing any instruments. Horrible off-key group singing plus some extremely sloppy and out-of-tune guitar playing ruined too many good songs for me. Everything from Stairway to Heaven to Good Riddance was absolutely brutalized by this little choir and they usually brutalized it LOUDLY! Once they started playing I knew that I should give up on sleeping. They always kept going until all of them had passed out, which was usually around sunrise. I usually ended up taking a long flight just so I could get away from them.

They slept almost the entire next day and when they woke up they would all be suffering from a huge hangover. They took the next night to recover and camp normally and then they would leave the following day.

But that wasn't everything they did. If they had left it at that then I would've had to give them their guitar back. But what they left behind each time made me decide that they didn't deserve to get it back.

When they left the place was an absolute mess. Logs that were rolled out of the woods to sit on were now sitting in the middle of the field. They always left their fire pit, rocks, hole, and all, still smoldering without even filling it back in. But the absolute worst part was all the garbage they left behind.

You're supposed to leave a campsite exactly as it was before you came in, that's the rule. That includes taking all your garbage with you. But I guess these guys didn't read that rule since everything from beer cans to whisky bottles to normal stuff like food wrappers and camping supply packaging was left sprawled all over the entire field.

I felt bad for the hawk whose territory it was, I really did. We were sort of friends (as much as hawks could be friends anyway), and I hated to see his territory like that. So it always ended up that I was the one to clean up after them. I rolled all the logs back in the woods. I collected all the garbage I could find and threw it in the fire pit (after I had doused the embers of course). After that I filled in the fire pit and threw the rocks back into the woods. There weren't very many options to get rid of the garbage out here, so that was all I could do.

I've wanted to get back at them ever since their last camping trip when they left an extra big mess for me to clean up. I was thinking about finding a bear or something to morph so I could rip up their tents to send them a message, but I had never gotten the chance. Their last camping trip up here was in the fall, and I didn't think that they'd be coming back in the winter time. I was wrong, sort of.

They passed by my meadow a day or so ago, but they didn't stop. They just kept hiking. Whether they were going to a new spot or just truly out for a hike I didn't know, but I was just happy that they didn't stop here. I lost sight of them this morning when they hiked out of my normal flying zone, but they continued to go deeper into the woods. I guess one of them had either fallen into the river or, more likely, one of the others had thrown the guitar into the river. They looked like somewhat rich kids. I'm sure they'd have another one by springtime.

But that put me into a strange position. What should I do with the guitar?

The first thing I did was to tip it over and let all the water run out of the sound hole. I started to pluck the ice off of the strings one by one, but when I heard the guitar strings began to vibrate it fill my mind with so many memories. Memories of my old guitar that I had left behind in that scrapyard after the war was over. Memories of all those songs I'd written. And, most importantly, memories of who most of those songs were about, Rachel.

I let out a huge sigh as my mind quickly switched to her. I never got the chance to show her what I'd been working on for so long. I always wanted to, but I could never build up enough courage to do so. And now, it was too late. She'd never hear any of them.

I didn't even realize it at first, but I had sat down on an iced over log (no small feat when you only have on a baggy pair of jeans and a T-shirt). When my mind finally came out of it's reflection on the past I was sitting there with the guitar in it's normal playing position in my arms.

I let out a long sigh and said to nobody, "Rachel, why'd you have to go? I miss you so much!" I felt the tears start to come, but I pushed them back. _No, no more tears _I told myself. But I had to do something. I could feel my sadness coming back and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Then it hit me. What if Rachel was watching me now? I mean, I didn't quite know how the afterlife works and all of that, but I knew that if it was possible she'd be watching me now. So what if I hadn't shown her what I had written for her before? I could show her right now!

I tried to remember a few of my older songs, but I just wasn't in the mood to play them right now. They were almost all about much happier times, and I just couldn't bring myself to play them in my current condition. That's when I knew I needed to play something different, something new, something that truly said how I felt right now.

"This one's for you Rachel," I said to the twinkling night sky. I wiggled my fingers to warm them up a bit and I strummed an A minor chord. I just let it flow from there.

_**Now that you're gone I, don't know what I should do,**_

_**I can't go back to my old life, not without you,**_

_**I don't feel right inside now, with all of this pain,**_

_**And I don't think I'll ever, feel the same.**_

_**You meant the world to me, and now if you could only see,**_

_**What I've come to be, I think that you'd agree,**_

_**Things were so much better, when you were around,**_

_**I used to feel better inside, but now I'm just down,**_

_**I thought you'd be here forever, for me to hold and see,**_

_**And if you can here me up there, you were everything to me.**_

_**The way I see it baby, you'll always be,**_

_**The one who made me happy, and still a part of me,**_

_**You seemed like the only one who, really knew who I was,**_

_**And now you're gone forever, just because.**_

_**You meant the world to me, and now if you could only see,**_

_**What I've come to be, I think that you'd agree,**_

_**Things were so much better, when you were around,**_

_**I used to feel better inside, but now I'm just down,**_

_**I thought you'd be here forever, for me to hold and see,**_

_**And if you can here me up there, you were everything to me.**_

_**But nothing will change the fact that, you're still not here,**_

_**It's something I've had to live with, for all of these years,**_

_**If I had just one last chance, something I could do,**_

_**I'd tell you that you're still my girl, and I still love you.**_

_**You meant the world to me, and now if you could only see,**_

_**What I've come to be, I think that you'd agree,**_

_**Things were so much better, when you were around,**_

_**I used to feel better inside, but now I'm just down,**_

_**I thought you'd be here forever, for me to hold and see,**_

_**And if you can here me up there,**_

_**you were everything to me.**_

Once I had finished I took my now frozen hand and gently wiped away the slowly freezing tears forming in my eyes. I wanted to continue playing. I wanted to keep crying. But on the other hand I could see my toes began to become discolored and I couldn't even grip the guitar anymore with my fingers. I had to demorph, I had no choice.

But now I felt good. I felt really good. I had found a way to channel my emotions about Rachel into something creative, and it felt absolutely wonderful to get even just the tiniest bit of sadness off my chest. It was a relief to know that I could finally let all the emotions out that had been bottled up inside me for so many months now. I had tasted how good it felt, but now I wanted a full course meal.

But I knew that was going to have to wait. Right now I had to get back to my meadow and go to sleep, but I knew that I'd be coming back here whenever I could.

I got up (painfully I might add) and leaned the guitar against a tree. I didn't think anything was going to bother it in this weather, so I didn't have much of a problem leaving it there for now. The worst thing that could happen was that some small mammal would try and make the guitar its home. And if that happened I was almost guaranteed a free meal. I guess it wouldn't be that much of a problem really. Long term storage was going to be an issue, but I had plenty of time to worry about that.

I looked up one more time at the now twinkling stars and said, "I love you Rachel," one last time before I demorphed and made my way back home.

* * *

Not exactly what you were expecting, huh? That's just how I roll. And if you think this one is shocking, wait until you read the third one that I have in mind.

Speaking about the third one, it's coming along. If it's going to be the next thing I post or not depends on a whole lot of factors, but there will be at least one more of these types of stories coming from me.


End file.
